Hunting the Mule -Deer in Colorado. 261 



The novice who is ambitious to slay one of these noble and 

 sagacious animals needs — of the very best — guide, gun, camp 

 outfit, route, range, and luck. If the weather had not its admirable 

 reputation for unfailing reliability in Colorado, during the shooting 

 season, from mid- August till January, he would need also to pray 

 for that. 



If you have plenty of time and little money, buy a good pony and 

 saddle, gun and ammunition, blankets, including a light rubber cloth 

 or overcoat, a side of bacon, and a frying-pan, — though you will, 

 when in permanent camp, probably, prefer to broil venison and fish 

 on the coals, — a little salt, a sack of hard-tack, another of dried fruit, 

 a few yards of good line, and two dozen gray hackles with brown 

 bodies, a change of underclothing, a picket-rope, and a light hatchet, 

 a skinning-knife, with belt and sheath, and a stout seamless sack big 

 enough to carry your perishables ; tie the lot together and set out on 

 foot.* You can take a little rest now and then, when the road is 

 good, on the top of all this, if balanced nicely on each side of the 

 saddle, or you may mount to ford a river. Of course, it is supposed 

 that you outfit at some valley town, probably Denver. At first, of 

 a certainty, your progress will be slow. Take your time. I have 

 enumerated the smallest possible list of impedimenta for a tyro. If 

 you stay with us for good, you may some time in the future be able 

 to set out on a trip through a few hundred miles of primitive wilder- 

 ness in a buckskin suit of your own stitching, and carrying, for equip- 

 ment and subsistence, your gun, three cartridges, a pinch of salt and 

 a jackknife, like Len Pollard; or to detest salt, like Old Hill; or to 

 make a good blanket of snow, like Doc. Porter. But, for a first 

 experience, you will find these things very handy, and your pam- 

 pered stomach will probably welcome the additions to your bill of fare 

 procurable at ranches by the way. By the time you have reached 

 Big Thompson, the Gunnison or the Grand, or the Upper Arkansas, 

 or any of the smaller tributaries of the Platte, your education will be 

 well under way. 



• The pony will cost twenty to eighty dollars ; saddle, bridle, etc.; ten to twenty- 

 five: a Sharp's "business" rifle, single trigger, with necessary implements, thirty to 

 fifty ; blankets, ten to fifteen ; and other necessaries at about home prices, with the 

 advantage of selection from approved stock appropriate to the precise needs of the 

 purchaser, and guaranteed to suit. 

 17 A 



